The Year of Pleasures (22 page)

“Oh, it took me a year.” Then she added quickly, “Don’t you do that! That was just a waste of time. I thought I
had
to wait a year. The truth is, I was ready long before that. Just didn’t want to tell anybody.”

“How soon were you ready?”

She put her cup down, leaned over toward me. “Okay. I have never told anyone this. There was a guy at my husband’s funeral . . .”

“No.”

She held up her hand. “I didn’t do anything. I just thought about it. I’ll tell you what, I wish somebody would come up with a dating service for people over fifty. It’s hell when you’re over fifty. The last blind date I had took me out to a nice restaurant, but after dinner he popped his upper denture out and laid it beside his plate, it was bothering him. Then he said oh did I mind. I had a good mind to rip off my new underwire bra, which was killing me, and throw it in the bread basket. ’Cept the old coot probably would have eaten it—he couldn’t see worth a damn!” She took out her compact and powdered her face. There was something lovely and old-fashioned in it; I liked watching. “Ready to go?” she asked.

“I wanted to ask you something else,” I said, then hesitated. I looked at her friendly face, her wide eyes.

“Go ahead,” she said.

“Okay, this is . . . I can’t tell you how silly I feel asking this question. But did you ever have night terrors after your husband died?”

She laughed. “Did I! Honey, I moved in with Marion O’Donahue for a month, and even there, I slept with the lights on. Do you know her? Glamour Daze, the hair place? Anyway, she lived by herself and had an extra room. I’d tried staying alone, and I lasted a whole three days. I was scared to death being alone.”

“Well, I’ve . . . been hearing things,” I said.

“Uh-oh. What kind of things?”

“Voices. A man’s voice. Not all the time, but sometimes. At night.”

She leaned back in her chair and sighed. “Well, I am sorry. Lydia told me she’d left a radio there up in the attic. But I told her I’d found no such thing. The truth is, I couldn’t climb all the stairs there, as you recall—I didn’t go into the attic or the basement. I’ll bet you anything it’s turned on and you just don’t hear it in the day.”

“I hope that’s true. If it is, I’ll feel very foolish. And very relieved!”

Delores looked at her watch. “Let’s go see. I’ll go with you. If it’s there, I’ll bring it to her. But I’ve got to hustle—I’ve got two clients this afternoon. I guess Ed Selwin’s show gave my business a jump start—I’ve had more calls than I can handle lately. I don’t like it one bit.”

I pulled down the ladder to the attic, then climbed up. I supposed it was an omission of sorts that I’d never been up there, but I’d never needed to be. I had enough room for storage in the basement, and I’d never liked climbing ladders into attics: going up was one thing, but coming down was difficult. What if I fell? I was alone now; I had to think about such things.

The attic smelled of dust and old fabric, and even with the light turned on, it was dark. But in a far corner, I saw it—an old brown radio. It was on top of a box, next to a chair stationed by the one window. And as I walked closer, I heard it. It was half tuned in—only the low sound of static now. What had Lydia done up here? Sat alone, listening to the radio? Why, when she had the whole house, did she isolate herself further in this way? I turned the radio off, unplugged it, and carried it down to Delores. “So you’re going to bring it to her now?” I asked.

Delores looked at her watch and sighed.

“I’ll do it,” I said, taking the radio back.

“You don’t have to do that!”

“It’s no problem,” I said. I’d see if there was anything in the box the radio sat on—Lydia might want that, too.

I walked Delores out to the car and waved as she drove away. Mystery solved—I wouldn’t be hearing that voice anymore. But I was going to rent Matthew’s room anyway—I’d made that decision the moment I found the radio. I really wanted to stay there once in a while. I’d get to fulfill my Snow White fantasy, and they’d get some much needed income.

I climbed back up the ladder and opened the box the radio had been sitting on. Letters. Two high stacks of them. I opened the one on top, dated December 2, 1942, and written in blue ink on tissue-thin stationery:

My own Lydia,

Say, you should have seen the fellows fighting over those things you sent! I shared some of the hard candy and the fudge, and I’ll pass on the paperback books after I read them. But the salami is mine alone, and of course the scarf you knit, too. Thank you sweetheart, but you shouldn’t have spent so much money—I know how hard you work.

You cannot imagine what it is like here, how far away I am from you and our life in New York. Farther than miles. It truly is a kind of hell, all smoke and redness, and full of things I could never describe to you, nor would I anyway—I have, after all, vowed to love and protect you and I mean that. Oddly, there are times of extreme boredom here, and it is then that I relish thinking of you, of what you see and do every day. I imagine you in your classes, your quick mind, what a fine teacher you will be! (And what a privilege it was to teach you!) I think of your proud independence in your very gait, your hats and gloves, the high sweetness of your voice. I miss talking to you so; we do not enjoy any women’s voices here.

Sweetheart, I must tell you I seem to have lost a good thirty to forty percent of my hearing—from the guns, the doc said. I hope you won’t mind so much. Sadder to say, I have now lost all five of the five friends who came here with me—Lester was killed yesterday, not thirty feet from me. What was good about his horrific death is that it was instant. I will miss him, that short boy who loved telling tall tales. And you know he had a keen appreciation of you—he often told me how much he admired your forthrightness. Stubbornness, you mean, I once joked, and he became quite serious and said no, it was a valuable thing to have a partner whose words you could always trust.

When I come back to New York, I want to get married right away. I know we said we’d wait a little while, but Lydia, it took so long for us to find each other and I, as you, truly believe we are the only ones for each other. Anyway, if I’ve learned anything from this war, it’s that people must not delay doing anything good.

So often, I think about the day before I left, our clothes in a tangle under the apple tree, how golden the light was against your body, how you, too, tasted of apple. I wonder, should I tell you something else? I will, but you must promise to never mention it again after we are at last—at long last!—reunited. I would be very much humiliated to have you bring it up again, face-to-face. But here, where even day is night, I feel a need to say everything to you, it is my consolation and my greatest joy. So I will tell you, Lydia, that every night before sleep I make a fist in a certain way and I pretend that two of my fingers are your mouth. And I kiss it, imagining

My eyes filled and I stopped reading.
We are the only ones for each other;
I knew exactly how that felt. I let the letter close along its softened folds and slipped it back into the envelope. I checked the postmark of a few more letters, all of them in order and dated before this one; this had been the last. I ran my fingers over the fine script on the outside.
Miss Lydia Samuels.
The woman she used to be.

I put the letter back on top of the pile and closed the box. I looked at my watch, took in a deep breath. Next week, when I could take the time I wanted to, I would bring it to her—right now, I had to get ready for my friends. I looked out the little window onto the street below and saw children playing, a woman walking a dog, cars passing, the white clouds against the blue sky. I saw my true age and circumstances; my great, great luck.

When I came home from shopping, I filled the house with roses—a bouquet for every room. I put out fancy wines: white, red, Merlot, Syrah. I’d also bought cold cuts and cheeses, fancy spreads, five pounds of mixed chocolates, beautiful breads, and I’d gotten Patricia Locke bracelets for all of us—Locke was a Chicago designer whose work was sparkling and beautiful and celebratory—what could be more fitting?

When the doorbell rang, I stood still for a moment, then opened it wide. There they were. It was stunning, really, how little it had taken to create such a grand moment. We stood on the porch, squealing and embracing, and then they came inside. A mix of perfumes. Nice-looking coats and purses thrown onto the sofa, luggage piled in a heap in the middle of the living room floor. We were all of us talking at once, and we moved as a group to the kitchen and took our places as though we had been there last night. I had imagined showing them to their rooms, giving a little tour of the house and the town, then suggesting we go into Chicago for a show or dinner.
What could I have been thinking?
I wondered.

Three hours later we were still at the table, on our third bottle of wine. Lorraine was dressed entirely in black: slim pants and a cashmere turtleneck sweater, her hair piled on top of her head and anchored with a silver barrette. Susanna, her straight and still-thick chin-length hair dyed a beautiful auburn, wore jeans, a low-cut turquoise sweater, and three necklaces: a single pearl, coral beads, and a long rope of crystal. Also two silver bangle bracelets and a large oval turquoise ring. Maddy was in a long brown skirt and a flannel shirt over which she wore a wide brown belt. She had not dyed her long hair: it was streaked with gray, like mine, but permed.

We were talking about what failure really meant, because I’d brought up the idea of my store, and had told them all my fears about failing, the biggest one being that I would squander all my money and then have to worry about how to make a living. If I did nothing, I’d be able to live comfortably for the rest of my life.

“But it would be boring!” Lorraine said. “You have to keep taking risks or you die inside!”

“Well, there are many ways of taking risks,” Maddy said. “You don’t have to open a store to take a risk.”

“Yeah, but listen to her idea,” Lorraine said. “This isn’t just a
store
store.” She looked over at me. “Tell them!”

I shrugged. “Oh, it’s just . . . I wanted to have a store that would be all different stuff that women love. Beautiful things, but unusual, too. Like antique birdcages with orchids growing in them. Designer jewelry, handmade paper journals. Vintage linens . . .”

“Aprons?” Maddy asked. “I love aprons. Could you have some bib aprons?”

I saw that my friends were all genuinely enthusiastic, and I began warming to the idea all over again. “I’ll have bib aprons,” I said, “and I’ll sew a good-luck charm inside them so everything you make when you wear them will come out perfectly. But you know, I want more than things. I want a place where women can just come and hang around. Maybe we could have readings.”

“Tarot card readings,” Susanna said. “Voice recitals. Performance pieces. Use little kids, like the old backyard plays kids used to do. The blanket curtains, some dog playing a part. My dog, Pepsi, used to always be a wounded soldier. We put catsup on his head and then wrapped toilet paper around it. I’ll be a partner with you; I’ll go in. This is a good idea, Betta!”

“I’ll go in, too,” Maddy said. “I want to help buy things. I want to be in charge of polka dots. I love polka dots. I’d put in polka-dotted plates. And socks. And dog beds. Okay?”

“I already told her I’m in, too,” Lorraine said.

“Okay, okay,” I said, laughing.

“It won’t fail,” Susanna said. “You’ll just have to be willing to put the time in.”

I leaned back in my chair and nodded. “I’ll think about it.”

“If you decide yes,” Susanna said, “I want you to have one thing in there for me. Little legal contracts that your customers have to sign, saying if they buy something for themselves, they’ll use it! Not store it away because it’s ‘too good.’ ”

“Who’s hungry?” I asked, because I was. Also, I wanted to stop talking about something I wasn’t really quite ready for yet.

Maddy looked at her watch. “Let’s go get lobster.”

“I don’t know of any place to get that here,” I said.

Susanna started for the phone. “Then let’s order out. You do have pizza here?”

“Of course!” I said.

“Well, I mean, it’s so
little,
” Susanna said. “I wish you wouldn’t have mentioned lobster, Maddy. Now I want lobster. These small towns are cute, but . . .”

I suddenly felt my throat tighten. John and I at Bay State Lobster, picking out our dinner. Later, him sucking the meat from the tiny lobster legs, laughing and saying I was crazy not to. A napkin tucked into the throat of his shirt.

“Oh,
God,
” Susanna said, “did I offend you? I didn’t mean to offend you. Wait, did I?”

“No, I just . . . still rocky.”

Maddy got out of her chair and knelt beside me, took my hands into her own. I stared straight ahead and then into her warm brown eyes. Lorraine and Susanna sat silent. After a moment, I smiled and said, “Okay. Pizza.”

Lorraine said, “While we’re waiting for it, let’s watch a movie. I brought
Strangers in Good Company.
It’s made by a woman, and the cast is all women and it’s fabulous. You need to stock it in your store, Betta.”

When I turned off the television, there was a collective sigh of appreciation. “ ‘
I’m
not gonna die; I’m gonna catch some
fish
!’ ” Susanna said, in perfect imitation of one of the characters in the movie. She was always like that, able to imitate almost anyone, able to enter fully into whatever emotions were required for any scene, even if it was only something she’d witnessed at the drugstore and then come home to act out for us in our tiny living room. She could move her body like a ninety-four-year-old or a toddler; her face had its own extensive vocabulary. I’d seen her star in so many productions in college, and inevitably I’d heard the people behind me whisper about how
good
she was, who
was
that? And then she became a lawyer. Now I said, “Susanna, why did you not pursue acting? You were always so good!”